Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a human rights activist, political analyst, and the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development. He was recently named a Global Expert on War, Peace and International Affairs by the Freedom Network of the Henry Hazlitt Foundation in Chicago. In this hard-hitting work, the author lays out what he regards to be the real strategies behind the war on terrorism. Although many journalists never seem to provide a context for present-day happenings, Ahmed has done his homework and contends that since World War II, America has helped to manufacture a continuing series of global threats to Western civilization. The crusade against Communism was not successful until politicians created a climate of fear and hysteria around it. Today the same process is at work in the war against the "axis of evil."
Ahmed contends that the motive behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq was always to take over the world's second largest proven oil reserves, to make the region safe for American corporations, and to give the defense contractors plenty of business in return for their patronage. Looking back, he notes how U.S. interests in the Middle East were jacked up when the Shah of Iran, a compliant ally in the region, was in charge. Of course, all that went to pieces when the Ayatollah's Islamist regime came to power. It was then that America and Britain decided to back Saddam Hussein in his eight year war against Iran. Twenty-six nations sold weapons to this dictator, and he made use of chemical weapons against Iranians and Kurds. Then after Saddam invaded Kuwait, the U.S. and its allies fought the first Gulf War, which was followed by 12 years of economic sanctions urged by the U.S. and carried out through the U.N. He calls these a "wholesale policy of genocide" given the numbers of Iraqi civilians who died as a result of them. Now American soldiers are occupying Iraq, and other U.S. troops are present in 130 nations around the world.
In an assessment of the current situation, Ahmed notes the parallels between the current and colonial eras. "Little has changed in the 'new world order' when the American Empire legitimizes the same brand of imperial values as a benevolent crusade designed to 'export democracy' to backward and helpless 'failed-states'. The atrocities undertaken in this vein are justified as 'pre-emptive' or even 'preventive' strikes against evil tyrannies intent on destroying the ever-innocent Western pinnacles of democracy." Behind the War on Terror is important reading for a year when Americans are deciding who will be the commander-in-chief for the next four years.
